News

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has begun operation of Cheyenne, a 5.34-petaflop supercomputer that will support a range of research related to weather, climate, and other Earth sciences. The system is currently ranked as the 20th most powerful system in the world, with a Linpack mark of 4.79 petaflops.

The introduction of NVIDIA’s Volta GPU architecture is being keenly anticipated by the supercomputing community. As we reported last July, when the rumors of an earlier-than-anticipated Volta release were bouncing around the internet, a 2017 launch of the next-generation Tesla GPUs seems all but certain. The latest speculation is that these first Volta parts will be based on a new 12nm FinFET technology recently devised by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

IBM has added TensorFlow, a machine learning software library developed by Google, to its PowerAI distribution. The move is aimed to expand the options for customers interested in enterprise-ready machine learning systems that IBM is targeting with its Power/NVIDIA GPU server gear.

D-Wave Systems has released 2000Q, its latest quantum computer intended to expand the scope of problems that can be run on qubit-based machinery. In conjunction with the general availability of the 2000Q, D-Wave also announced the first customer: Temporal Defense Systems Inc., a cyber security firm.

As Donald Trump takes the reins of power, his administration is outlining a plan that would entail significant cuts in US federal spending. One of the agencies targeted is the Department of Energy, which, if the report is true, could have its scientific research and computing budget sliced in half.

China is developing a new supercomputer designed to be “a prototype of an exascale computer.” Although the country is not expected to the field its first exascale machine until 2020, the prototype is scheduled to boot up before the end of this year. Most likely, the system in question is the infamous Tianhe-2A supercomputer.

Cray is going to build what will looks to be the world’s first ARM-based supercomputer. The system, known as “Isambard,” will be the basis of a new UK-based HPC service that will offer the machine as a platform to support scientific research and to evaluate ARM technologies for high performance computing. Installation of Isambard is scheduled to begin in March and be up and running before the end of the year.

The Mont-Blanc Project has selected Cavium’s ThunderX2 ARM processor to power its next prototype for exascale computing. The system will be constructed by Bull (Atos), leveraging the supercomputer maker’s “exascale-ready” sequana architecture, as well as the high-performance features of the ThunderX2 SoC product.